Showing posts with label boring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boring. Show all posts

Monday, April 7, 2014

Deconstructing the FPS AKA Boring Horizontal Whack a Mole

It is my contention that fps games are, at their core, both boring and mind numbingly simplistic. While there are a variety of skills at play during, for example, an online game of Call of Duty (was I going to use any other game/series for my example?) the one that comprises more than 50% of the player's actions is the act of aiming. Trying to line up either your reticule or your iron sights with the current (or future, in the case of those longer distance shots that require you to lead the target) location of your intended target is, as anyone who has experience with the genre will tell you, a large portion of the player's actions during any given game. Would it be unreasonable for me to state that this large portion is somewhere over 50% of the players actions during gameplay?

No, I say? Okay then, I answered my own question and I have to say I agree with myself (aren't one way conversations great for being right?). It's not an exaggeration to say that more than half of the actions you take while playing your typical online fps consist of aiming your weapon at various targets. Well, what does aiming at a target entail and why am I harping on this? Let's deconstruct: If you strip away the visual and auditory feedback mechanisms in place what do you get at its core? Fundamentally, you have periods of navigating through an enclosed environment punctuated with bursts of moving a cursor around the screen and trying to time the pull of a trigger with the placement of the cursor over the avatar of the intended target.